Earpieces, earphones, headsets, headphones or other handsfree solutions are commonly utilized to keep the sound private and/or to facilitate multitasking when listening to music, talking in the phone, getting body function updates from your wristlet etc. Due to the rapid development of new electronic devices, e.g. mp3 players, tablets, smart phones, wearables, etc., where the sound experience plays an important role, the technique for transmittal of sound to the earpieces has undergone major improvements.
Conventional headphones or earpieces are generally wired to audio devices. However, for some time, wires can be avoided by utilizing different kinds of short range wireless solutions, also referred to as Personal Area Network (PAN) solutions. Examples are; Bluetooth® (BT), Infrared Data Association (IrDA), ZigBee®, Ultra Wide Band (UWB), etc. The radio-frequency (RF) techniques have some drawbacks, e.g. there might be a limited operating time due to relatively high power consumption of the RF transceiver, there is a risk of interference with other RF systems operating in the same frequency band.
Even though the above-mentioned known devices and methods of controlling data transfer between such devices, by wire or wirelessly, are relatively straight-forward for a user of such devices and wearables, such as mobile telephones, headphones, headsets, microphones, speakers and/or wristlets, there is an increasing demand in the mobile device market for even more easy, quick and user-friendly ways of using a mobile phone or other portable electronic device and wearable communication devices, e.g. headsets.
In particular, with regard to audio and voice communication, there is a need to simplify the user interaction with mobile phones and any headphones, and there is a need for faster, easier and more intuitive ways of controlling the communication between such devices by means of easy and convenient methods and autonomous hardware.
Furthermore, there is an increasing demand on reduced size of portable and wearable devices for communication, specifically the foot print areas as displays are getting bigger while the device in itself is getting thinner. Hence, in many cases, the available volume and envelope surfaces of housings for such wearable devices are getting smaller, or at least the height or thickness of a new model of such a device is often reduced, meaning that overall heights and sizes and foot print areas of associated hardware, e.g. antennas, sensors, and integrated circuits, inside the wearable devices undergo delicate optimizations of available space as more and more hardware components often are to be introduced in such a device. Hence, there is a need of a reliable and simple portable electronic communication device that has an optimized/minimized overall size and envelope surface size and foot-print area. This is also due to the fact that the size of portable and wearable electronic communication devices, i.e. at least their height or thickness in z-axis, must be as small as possible as the thicknesses of such electronic devices decreases constantly, whereby the available height for hardware inside such devices decreases and also allows only a certain minimum height available for clearance and/or room for the thickness and heat dissipation of the associated active circuitry of the hardware inside such a device. The surface area of the hardware inside the housing of a wearable electronic communication device and the housing itself also involves an increased cost for the manufacturer of the device as any additional volume or area of the device in general demand more effort and material at manufacture. Yet further, when a wearable electronic device is to be equipped with additional hardware, such as BAN/BCC antennas and capacitive sensors, the handling and size of the portable electronic device are compromised as known hardware, due to their shape, require a certain minimum height and foot-print area inside such a device, but also externally of the device, i.e. the outer envelope surface is also affected by the above delicate considerations of dimensions.